Minister Mounouna Foutsou unveiled the commemorative pillar on 1^st February, 2016.

Although cost undisclosed, the monument installed at the Tiko round-about and commissioned by the Minister of Youth Affairs and Civic Education, Mounouna Foutsou, last 1^st February, 2016, marks the golden jubilee of Cameroon Youth Day and wears political, historical and social garments. While the gravestone speaks volumes of the journey made by the youth day in Cameroon, the theme for this year’s celebration was coined to be “Youth, citizenship and the fight against insecurity for the advent of an emerging Cameroon”.

Politically, Minister Foutsou enjoined the youth, to whom the monument is dedicated, to heed to President Paul Biya’s call on churches, temples and mosques to become real schools of citizenship, discipline and morality. Adding his own voice, the Minister admonished parents, traditional, religious, and political leaders, educators, elites and communities to accompany the youth in their daunting task of building an exemplary, emerging, peaceful, democratic and united Cameroon.  He styled the youth the Nation’s spearhead highlighting the context within which the 50^th Youth Day (11 February) this year is taking place under insecurity orchestrated in the Far North Region by the cowardly Boko Haram sect who brainwash and manipulate the youth turning them into carriers of explosives. He also cited the insecurity in the East Region caused by insurgents from neighbouring Countries generating a rise in the number of refugees.

Historically, it was drummed into the ears of thousands of pupils and students who turned out at the Tiko ceremonial ground that the Tiko Monument also traces the history of the Youth Day generally celebrated in Cameroon every 11 February as an emanation of the then West Cameroon. The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Civic Education has used their 50^th anniversary publication to explain that “Originally known as The Youth Day, the youth festival which was celebrated in the then Western Cameroon has become a national institution after the reunification of the French-speaking and the English-speaking parts of Cameroon following the 11 February, 1961 referendum”.

Socially, the red-carpet honour to the youth this year as echoed from government quarters calls for a radical change of mentality to shun vices such as laziness, corruption, theft, prostitution, cyber criminality, alcoholism, drug addiction, fey mania, and give room for responsibility, honesty, creativity, hard work, and productivity. The Minister was particularly happy with the Tiko youth President, Esendege Fidelis Fonjock, who restated the needs of the youth and pledged total commitment to State institutions.

The time testing monument in Tiko was accompanied by foodstuff and agricultural tools for youth groups and which material the Minister personally dished out to mark the launching of the golden jubilee of Cameroon Youth Day in Tiko, gateway into the South West Region, one of the two English-speaking Regions of the Country. Coming this far, the Minister explained, was to communion with the melting pot of Cameroon youthful population of all classes also known to be peaceful in strict national integration. The Tiko Mayor, Moukondo Daniel Ngande, rejoiced that history was coming home the event was a big honour for Tiko. Governor Bernard Okalia Bilai and the Deputy Director of the National Civic Service Agency for Participation in Development, Esua John Enow, accompanied Minister Foutsou throughout his two-day stay in the South West Region including the Buea Prisons where food items were also donated.